Forever Interactive Times

Q1 2011

2011-02-02T14:38:00.000-06:00

Q1 2011 - Welcome back fans! We have ALOT to go over since our post last year. I know the updates here seem VERY infrequent however I now have enough people in place to dedicate more time on community management. Let's get things started!

Forever Interactive has partnered with Idea Fabrik, a German based MMO company, who recently bought out Simutronics and it's Hero Engine technology. This business deal means we now have a clear line to launch VoZ and Infernal World to the public. They offer hosting services and billing services along with it's Hero Blade Engine. This all in one package streamlines our MMO pipelines from conception to market. Not only that it speeds up our development times by use of it's agile cloud based engine allowing us to collaborate in real time across the globe. We look forward to this partnership as the MMO industry is poised to reach 12 billion dollars in revenue by 2015. Forever Interactive has also partnered with indie tool developers, SILO and Daz 3D, to use it's modeling and animation software in developing our games. Both companies are dedicated to fostering partnerships within the indie game development community.

Visions of Zosimos is currently in the process of transferring from Torque 3D to Hero Blade. This transition will take a couple months however it's longevity will be even more secure. We have streamlined the design to make the game more accessible to all. We are updating all our assets to show the true power of Hero. I think you will be pleased with the upgrades we are making. Our plans allow for a more social gaming environment and experience while staying true to our core mechanics. We plan on releasing the game in an Open Alpha state just after Q1 this year. This allow you, the fans, to help grow VoZ to where it needs to be over the years to come. Stay Tuned!!

Battle Gnomes is an action adventure puzzle game using the Unity 3D Engine. It's almost to a gold state in it's development cycle. We plan on entering our demo world to the Kongregate site by February 15th and releasing the full game to the Apple and Droid markets soon thereafter. If we do well on those platforms we will be looking to hit the DLC market after that.

Community Management now has a full member! Mike Anderson, Dark Trilarian, is our direct link to you the fans. He will be active across all forums and ensuring your greatest feedback on all our titles will make it into our builds. Our fans and our members are our greatest assets and we want both to be at the forefront of our titles. Please go to our main site news page and become fans of our facebook and twitter pages. Lend your voices and we will have fun making great games together!!!

Q1 2010

2010-04-10T19:38:00.003-05:00

Ok we had ALOT going on for us since the new year. I am going to recap the news thus far and add some insight into our future.

First off we built our game "Visions of Zosimos" to an Alpha state which we will be announcing and opening to the public. This Open Alpha testing module will allow us to create great compelling gameplay faster. It also creates a bigger fan based community sooner. We look forward to having you on board. You can sign up at our site http://www.visionsofzosimos.net/ We also sent out a full media blitz from expanding our website to full video of our builds.

We were also featured in the Journal Sentinel for our involvement in the Indie Scene here in Wisconsin and our Completely Virtual Agile Development Method. Our story is here: http://www.jsonline.com/features/technology/84796037.html

We also attended this years Midwest Gaming Classic on an invitation from the IGDA to talk about our role in the Midwest Game Development scene and the Alpha release of VoZ. We met alot of other Indie Dev groups as well as some veterans and garnered alot of great feedback regarding our alpha build with VoZ. Thanks to the IGDA for allowings us the voice to speak to many others like us. Our video is live here: http://vimeo.com/10762614

In April we also submitted our Game Design doc for "Infernal World" to this years PlayExpo at UW Whitewater. We met some very talented individuals and were able to gain some sincere interest within the industry. Well done to all those involved.

In future news we are planning to enter VoZ in a couple Indie Contests then building it to a Beta state by Q4 of this year. We are also now approved for Facebook and iPhone/iPad development and are looking at a few opportunities in this lucrative market. We hope to add some partnerships in the coming months who believe in what we are doing and are trying to accomplish.

We created a fan page on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forever-Interactive-LLC/108050259232723?v=wall Become a Fan!

In closing we will be showcasing more of VoZ and possibly adding a few more projects before the end of the year. We look forward to sharing it with you! /Onward!!

Our Next Iteration!

2009-11-04T08:36:00.009-06:00

Finally got this blog linked to our main site. So it seems fitting we add some more news from behind the scenes. First off we decided to take the two projects we were working on and merge them into one. The RPG lost quite a few members and was going to take longer to develop than expected. "Visions of Zosimos" our web based board/card game needed more talent and was entering it's Alpha phase of development so rather than spend months recruiting for 2 projects and training them it made sense just to merge them together. This decision sped up our development milestones for VoZ by being fully staffed with people who already understand the agile virtual model. This led to another decision to create a fighting game using a design doc we already had created and using the assets we created from the RPG we shelved. This team took two weeks to build and will require a shorter dev period with a smaller team of 5-10 ppl. So now we have two projects with smaller dev cycles that are fully staffed and running on all cylinders.

We are now affiliated with the Wisconsin chapter of the IGDA. This is awesome news and further secures our position in the Game Development field here in the Midwest. It also directly mirrors the IGDA in their commitment to enhancing a quality of life for game developers and our Agile Virtual dev method.

In other news, I am helping MATC (Milwaukee) train it's 3rd semester CSG students in using UT3 to create a mod in an Agile Virtual environment. There is a link to this project directly on our site. So far it has been real rewarding seeing how they are embracing this method. There is no doubt they will have something truly amazing to show in their portfolios at the end of the program.

Alot of updates coming this month as we will be doing live Alpha Testing for VoZ. The game is now live on our servers. New fighting game site will be live off our main site showcasing updates and video. We will be delivering some podcasts pertaining to FI build and VoZ development. These next few months promise to be pretty amazing! /onward!

News up until now

2009-06-05T16:32:00.004-05:00

Well it certainly has been a long while since my last post but I feel now I can sit back and free up some more of my time to post regularly on my blog and twitter pages. I suppose I should start from the beginning of the year now that we are 6 months in. As of January first we decided to split our team in two and take two seperate approaches to the games we are creating. This required we put Infernal World on hold and focus on two smaller projects. One a web based board/card game using micro-transactions and a single player RPG set in the same IP as Infernal World but before the events leading up it. This approach allows us to get a game into market with very little to no outside funding in a very short amount of time. It also focuses on two huge markets. Web based micro-transactions and RPGs both are huge markets and have very little competition. We feel we have a lot to offer in these areas and can compete very well against the competition. During this transition I have been recruiting heavily to staff each team adequately and it always consumes the most of my time. It is something I feel I have gotten very good at over the years. Now that we are ending our recruiting season I can focus more on my Development resposibilities and have some fun creating games. Currently we are in full-production on both projects and hope to be in a strong Alpha by summers end. Then be at a strong Beta by the end of 2009.

We are also refining our business plan for both projects while improving our Milestones so we can better showcase our teams/projects to Angel Investors, Publishers, and Venture Capitalists. We have also signed on for two major contests coming in 2010 so our teams have something to strive for. The last contest we entered we won so I have no doubt we can do the same. Out of this transition we lost some great members, we lost some bad ones, but in the end I feel we have never been stronger. The tools and pipelines we are currently using have been refined into a well oiled machine that keeps getting better and better. Our teams are very well rounded and SUPER ambitious and so far have not found a hurdle they can't cross. I would like to thank Milwaukee Area Technical College for being such a good partner in our Companys success thus far and allowing us to use their new MOCAP Studio. Thank you to all the schools who see great potential in us and are grateful for the business model we offer their graduates. The Art Institute across America but mostly the Illinois Intstitute has been especially helpful in both finding recruits and giving their graduates an outlet in this amazing feild. The American Academy of Art has been a great partner as well as Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. The list goes on and on of great schools that are linking amazing recruits to us. I hope to continue to work with them every year!

Over the next few months our goals are clear. I will be enriching our sites with the amazing media and art that our outstanding members are creating. Building relationships within our chosen industry to develop great games for emerging platforms. Refining our Company to become more efficient and successful than ever before. More than anything else we will be fighting to create something that will be the benchmark of Game Developement for the future. Thanks! /Onward

Post Hero Blade!

2009-01-16T07:02:00.003-06:00

Use of the Hero Blade taught us alot about our pipelines. This is a VERY robust tool and one we loved to use. I would love to get the funding needed to obtain the license for this Engine. It directly plugs into our development methods and virtual studio with ease. It was alot of fun creating and testing our ability sets for Infernal World. I loved seeing our whole team in there and creating all at the same time. We were able to get alot accomplished within the short time with it and now have a video on InfernalWorld.net showcasing our final output.Once again thank you Simutronics for this rare and wonderful opportunity.

Post GDC!

2009-01-16T06:50:00.006-06:00

Well ALOT has happened since last years GDC. We left with a ton of positive feedback. A great review from MMORPG.COM and some excellent leads for VC. We continued to build for the Multiverse platform but began to outgrow the technology. The feedback we were continually getting from VC was they wanted to see more gameplay. We could not accomplish this with the current iteration of MV so we looked for another engine to showcase our combat. This led us to Simutronics and the Hero Blade. In late July we were given access to thier technology for 30days. We traveled to St Louis for 4 days of training and began to build our first zone along with combat using the DnD 4th Edition ruleset.

The Week Before GDC

2008-02-12T17:10:00.001-06:00

Here we are a week before GDC and we are scrambling as hard as we can to get the most out of this conference. When I first began this company back in Jan 2006 I had dreamed we would get this far but scared as hell we wouldn't. It's so invigorating to be on the floor with so many other talented people and industry legends showing off our game. I am so proud of our team and what we were able to accomplish so far. That being said we aren't done yet! There is sooo much left to do we have just hit the tip of the iceberg. To better prepare ourselves for the next phase of our growth we have decided to adopt a Development style called Agile & Scrum Development. This will allow us to get as much into the engine as possible faster and under budget. My brother is going for his certification in this method and will be attending a few conferences to ensure we are operating at peak level by April 1st. We can use this method in the Virtual Studio realm we are currently developing under as well as the brick and mortar we are shooting for. So it will be easy to transfer over to both environments. Our next goal will be securing Venture Capital and or Angel Investment. We have been building our Business Plan this last month to be ready for GDC and any contacts we may make there. So far the numbers are quite refreshing and seem within reach for a 50 person team over 3 yrs. GDC is going to be a GREAT opportunity for us and we plan on making the most of it. My next post will be going over the conference and sharing with you my experience. See you then! /onward!!!

Testing Scribe Fire

2007-12-14T12:08:00.001-06:00

I am trying out the Scribefire plugin for Firefox. It should allow me to post to this blog fairly easily. Test Test Test...

Crunch Time!!

2007-12-07T18:57:00.001-06:00

Well we are now in serious Crunch Time! With 4 weeks left before submitting our Demo World to MV. We are adding content daily and working well into the morning hours. I have been working on particle systems recently. It seems it's another hat I have to wear to fill a vacant hole on our team. No worries though as I loved doing them in college and could use a refresher course. So far we've added some default ones that came with the engine. I will be attempting to modify the rain emitter to something that fits our world better. I guess it's time to dust off my 3dsmax Bible! *cough* *cough* I have been and will continue to work on http://www.infernalworld.net/ as well so keep an eye for updates there! Added our new logo and color scheme to the forums so make an account as we will most likely add you to Alpha if your a fan early!

Demo World

2007-11-16T22:14:00.000-06:00

Phase 1 of our demo world is now integrated onto our server. We are getting our textures mixed up importing from PNP Terrain Generator into MV Engine. After some toil we have resolved this issue and are moving on. Currently 3/4 quadrants are completed in max. Once the terrain is finished we will be adding content. Mainly a simple questline and foilage. We have given ourselves a Dec 15th internal deadline to have all content in this world and ready for polishing. This will give us 3-4weeks to make sure this looks as good as possible for submission to the MV team. Our hope is to be one of the top 6 developers for this platform and solidify a spot at this coming years GDC. In other areas of development we have had some issues with our 2D Art Team and stepping up production. I am spending alot of time reworking the structure of this team to be on pace with the others in all areas of communications and submission of work. After this restructure I will be actively recruiting members to secure a quality 2D Team. Alot of my time on this project has been recruiting and sometimes finding passionate people can be difficult. On a side note I have begun working on our template for infernalworld.net we plan on having this and the forums up and running very soon so check it often. Alot of progress has been made and the fun stuff is starting to happen so I can't wait to get back into Design of Infernal World. Alpha 1 starts Feb 21st shoot me an email if your interested in testing. /bow

Home Stretch

2007-10-26T16:57:00.000-05:00

I know it has been awhile since my last posting and I hope to post more in the future. We have been very busy getting our pipelines in order. After much headache we now have an established pipeline for adding assets to our demo world. Soon we will be polishing all of our 3D content and adding it to our server. Due to the limitations of the MV engine we have had to revamp design more than a few times. We have designed our first zone, environment, npcs, boss, pc, and storyline. Almost all 3D content is finished and in the engine. We are planning for this to be completed on January 1st so MV can log into our server and see what we have. MV is only accepting the top 6 teams for the showfloor of GDC in February, and we plan on being one of them. In the meantime we are gearing up for Alpha1 on February 1st. This will entail all gameplay and systems. We are going over our battle system and setting up an OpenRPG server to test our classes and numbers. We plan on assessing gameplay often and early during this project so our design revolves around it. Please wish us luck! GDC here we come!

Update!

2007-08-20T17:20:00.000-05:00

Well I took a small break from updating the site to get our Design Team started on mapping out our storyline for "Infernal World". After some solid research regarding writing for games I believe I have a much firmer grasp on how to attack it. We always had a rough outline of the storyline just nothing concrete. I wish we had done this sooner as we may of bypassed some of the initial design problems we have encountered. Now that the templates are in place I am returning to the website and should be have it finished by the end of the month. Also, our new IRC channel is in place on our new SERVER! We finally have an integrated chat system for all our members. We will have Multiverse up by months end and soon our first demo world. Everyone on the Team is extremely excited. Stay posted! I am currently finishing up recruiting our final spots for 3D Environment and Character Modelers. After that we will be a full 40 person Team. All in all, September will be a VERY busy month and we look forward to every minute of it. See you then! ^^

We're Back!

2007-07-21T13:35:00.000-05:00

Well as you can see we are finally back after having been gone for some time. I spent a large amount of this time getting our Teams up to full capacity. So far we are at 33 members and rounding out the final spots of our teams. Our virtual network is almost complete and our main server is up and operational. We were recently invited to Multiverses' closed beta servers to test our connection and establish our Demo world. Currently we are designing, drawing, modeling, animating, and making sound for our first world. This world is where we will test our overall gameplay for "Infernal World" We want this to be ready for GDC in February of '08 Once there, we will be showcasing our game alongside other developers for MV. Currently I am working on our websites with our Interface Designer, Peter Chanthasena, so far so good. Much more updates to come! Oh btw it's good to be back! woohooo!

Westwood College Job Fair

2006-07-12T20:15:00.000-05:00

On Monday July 10th 2006 Forever Interactive attended Westwood O'Hares' 1st annual Job Fair. We were the only game company represented so I was cordially asked to speak to the students. I must say this school is small but very personable and has GREAT faculty who care ALOT about their students. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of people turn up at the rumor of me speaking. These kids were eager to have someone take the time and talk gaming with them. They all had resumes ready and some had business cards. I wish more would of had some form of a portfolio to show but most were only in their first and second year of school. I asked to see some of the students work and was blown away at the talent they coming through there. They had 2D and 3D games to show me all of which were done very well. During my speech they all listened wide eyed and intently to everything I had to say and gave me some good questions that I hope I had answered to their liking. I had a wonderful time talking to all the students and look forward to recruiting from Westwood often as I can. The talent is definately there. Thank you to the staff and student base, it was a pleasure, and I hope to be back real soon showcasing the talent of Forever Interactive to another batch of fine students and faculty.

Portfolio Night @ MATC

2006-05-14T23:08:00.000-05:00

On Thursday the 11th of May FI attended MATCs Portfolio Night for its VICOM and Graphic Arts students. We had the opportunity to meet a few very talented individuals and discuss our Company with them. It's great to see such great talent coming from Milwaukee. Many of the students like what we have to offer and showed great interest in our endeavor. I put a link to the "Official Site" of MATCs Portfolio Night in the link above. Take some time to look over their work. Give them some feedback, it will be well recieved. I'm still waiting to hear back from a few candidates. Overall this was a great visit to a great school. I enjoyed seeing some of my old teachers and catching up with them. It's truely a wonderful partnership indeed. Until next time.......

MATC Meetup

2006-04-27T10:17:00.000-05:00

Recently FI had the chance to talk to MATC and its 3D department regarding the current gaming job market in the midwest. This was an informal meeting of about 20 Faculty and students. The students seemed very eager to hear what FI has to offer to emerging students, current students, and proffesionals in the midwest gaming industry. Roughly 10 of the students in the audience showed interest in the games industry and of those 10 half wished to remain in the midwest. It shows that if we had the jobs we could have the talent. FI also showed some of the demo reels of current applicants. Alot of talent from all stages in gaming are very interested in what we have to offer. Our business model shows how we are going to accomplish our goals. We are a group of UNPAID, entrepenuers (investing $ into FI) all with a goal in accomplishing something magnificient in Indie Gaming. FI offers individuals a chance to own the company they work for, while gaining experience in running a studio and completing a game. All without the publishers breathing down your neck and telling you what game to make. We offer potential to learn other areas of creation than what you may be pigeon holed into. This allows you to grow as a student of game creation. FI is a very unique endeavor and can potentially be very rewarding. MATC welcomed FI with open arms and is committed to harboring a bridge for its students to cross over into gaming. Currently that gap is filled with either becoming a game tester or unpaid internships where you most likely will be learning how to grab coffee with no potential reward other than maybe landing a job. This opportunity warps students right into the position and accelerates the learning experience. We are all here to learn and use FI for that purpose. MIAD has also joined us in partnering with its students of art and our company to establish a bridge between art students and gaming in the midwest. Milwaukee is an untapped region for great talent that no other developer has a care to nuture. FI hopes to change that. Some of our other applicants come from MO and MI. We are amazed at the amount of feedback and response we are getting from people who need this opportunity and we plan to make the best out of it. We also discussed FIs current project "Infernal World". The ideas that we shared were received with great enthusiasm. We see a great need for working with students to become better at their skills while trying to break into the indsutry and it seems others do too! We would like to thank MATC and MIAD for partnering with FI. Thank you for giving us the chance to make a difference in the midwest. Please check out our event media video in the media section of the website its short but is proof of our commitment.

IGDA Meeting Blitz "The League"

2006-02-17T06:52:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone! This week we attended the IGDA meeting at Depaul University. Midway Games recently finished their title Blitz "The League" and came to share what went wrong and right during the production. I am here to share some of my thoughts on the meeting so that some of our team, who could not attend, may have some insight into the event. Autodesk "3dsmax" was on hand as well to give away some nice stuff and info on the latest 3dsmax 8 release. My old teacher was a beta tester for them prior to its release and I'm sure it will be well received.

Midway returned to the classic arcade feel that made the game fun in the first place. This required them to frontload gameplay to ensure this was a fun game. Gameplay over graphics once again holds true.

They maintained a shock factor that made you say "oh shit!" multiple times throughout the game. After watching the trailer I felt and said that on a few occassions myself. They went against the grain and the NFL. This made them answer to noone but themselves. I never knew that Midway dropped then NFL license 6 months before EA games bought exclusivity rights. They maintain that even though EA did that, it helped their campaign by becoming this anti - establishment underdog that people can rally behind. I believe it worked.

The game took 1 year to complete with a team of 40 people. Some of the pitfalls recognized by them are a need to write the story early before production. It will dictate what you'll need for production and any changes will slow you down significantly. Know the tools needed based on the writing. This will tell you how you want your scenes to be played out and what tools you will need to create them. The large team created a "hurry up and wait" scenario on various occassions. The production pipeline needed to perform more efficiently. They blamed frontloading gameplay as one of the factors in this. You can always tweak gameplay during production. They also said at the same time, that doing that, made the game more fun.

Games never are what you first invision them becoming. They evolve as they are created and will tell you what it needs to be.

Use of visuals to rally the team really helps. They used signs that told the establishment to, get bent! The theme they had from launch was also the theme the press was using for their articles covering the game.

They censored themelves to eradicate too many "F" bombs thus becoming more mature than juvenile. Adding LT to the staff may have helped credibility to the game as well.

A more specialized team base helped with production times but they were always searching for that go to renaissance man at crunch time to get things done. I will be locking our teams for the April meeting so that we have a clear vision of our recruitment goals in June.

Finally! Plan for failure early so that you can make that 1 great success. Expect failures and you can thwart it to your advantage.

After the meeting they held a raffle for some Blitz League hats and some Autodesk backpacks. Every attendee received a Blitz League cheerleader calender upon departure. See you next week as I finish the website and new splash page with our LOGO!

Attendees: Joe W. & Emil H.

Some tools used by Midway Games for this title:
Maya 6
3dsmax 7
Renderware
Z-Brush
C++

Beginnings

2006-02-14T08:55:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Forever Interactive Times! Stay tuned! More to come.......